“A biologist, a chemist and a farmer walk into a bar.” Sounds like the beginning of a classic pub joke, doesn’t it? But these days, real-life drama surrounds this new breed of “scientists”—micro-maltsters, romanced by the lure of the craft, with their own hands at the epicenter.

“We want to supply those who want to make a truly local craft beer,” says Mark Brault of Deer Creek Malthouse in Chester County. “This is for those who value a local, high-quality, artisan product—people like smaller craft brewers, smaller distillers, and local homebrewers, for sure.”

Their craft starts at the ground level, with seed heads steaming and damp on the floor of a garage or 150-year-old barn. Inside each hull, an embryo grows—the acrospire, along with enzymes and starches needed to nourish yeast in the brewing process. From these starches, maltose provides the sugars that will convert to alcohol and carbon dioxide, while dextrins provide fullness.

The acrospire develops next to the larger endosperm, as rootlets push out from the hull, like little legs in an animated cartoon. During germination, these rootlets grow to about twice the length of the grain. In the process, the dampened hulls require raking and turning to separate the gnarly rootlets and prevent molds from forming within the damp mass on the cool floor. It takes time and patience. For the maltster, this process becomes a labor-of-love—a waiting game for the right moment when drying and roasting can begin.

In some malthouses, equipment bootstrapped-together echoes bygone days of 19th century craftsmen. In others, equipment akin to a rocket motor or NASA satellite, have been re-configured from blueprints pulled from old engineering books. It’s enough to make MacGyver jealous. Aside from equipment for large-scale malting, few options exist, so engineering and invention becomes a part of the maltster’s modus operandi.

Why bother?

Remember the hoopla in the craft beer world surrounding Belgian yeast, wild fermentation and Brettanomyces cultures? Walking hand-in-hand with beer’s “cultural” revolution were those distinctive designer hops that could peel the skin off the roof of your mouth. Simply put, sour-lovers loved horse-blanket and hopheads couldn’t get enough resin, pine needles, and grapefruit rind.

Artisan brewers readily embraced the raw materials of yeast and hops. But what about grain, hand-raked and slow roasted in a self-designed space capsule? Some would be discouraged by the economies of scale needed to create true terroir as a local maltster. After all, “It takes a village.”

Micro-malting is, perhaps, the most “grass roots” (pardon the pun) process in the craft beer world, one with a growing demand in the healthiest craft beer communities of the country, including our own Pennsylvania farmlands. Local Glen Mills is now home to Deer Creek Malthouse, founded by Biologist Mark Brault, Chemist Josh Oliver and Farmer Scott Welsh. As part of their quality control, they are avid homebrewers, trumped by Welsh, a member of the Main Line Brewers Association. “It’s a collaborative effort of community,” asserts Mark Brault.

“For a craft beer producer to not have a craft malt seemed off to me,” he says. With his experience as a homebrewer, becoming a micro-maltster seemed like a natural progression. It was “about bringing the beer closer to the farmer,” he continues.

Knowing where to begin was the problem.

Designing the Process

When Christian and Andrea Stanley founded Valley Malt in 2010, their minds whirled with the romance of the artisanal life. Focused on small-scale malting, they joined the cutting edge of a movement that stepped back in history, guided by pamphlets from 1943 and their own imagination.

With a self-designed micro-malthouse in Hadley, Massachusetts, they began inspiring local craft brewers, particularly out-of-the-box thinkers like Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware, Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing in Massachusetts, and Rob Tod of Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine. In the process, they became role models for the offbeat ingenuity of people like Brault, Welsh and Oliver.

These micro-maltsters are part of an American dream to bring back unique processes that had been wiped out during The Great Experiment of Temperance. By trial and error, much of the process is based on theory. “There aren’t many options for making one-to-five ton batches,” explains Brault.

In 2004, Lance Jergensen of Rebel Malting resurrected micro-malting in Reno, Nevada, following a trip to Denmark where he observed the old-world craft first-hand. His tiny operation focuses on supplying malt for local homebrewers or one-off batches for nearby craft brewers or distillers. A recent collaboration project with Great Basin Brewery Company and the Nevada Museum of Art produced beer from his malted emmer wheat, one of the traditional grains used for ancient brewing in the Fertile Crescent.

Focused on sustainability, Jergensen’s malthouse utilizes technology that decreases water usage by 30%. He has developed “parabolic solar troughs,” collecting enough sunshine for heat during the initial stage of kilning.

In 2006, Bruno Vachon established Malterie Frontenac in Thetford Mines, Quebec. As suppliers of malt for Boston Beer’s Infinium, he has already achieved a reputation for producing fresh, hand-crafted malt in batches large enough to satisfy the artisan branch of Sam Adams.

Since then, other artisan maltsters have cropped up across the country:

Colorado Malting in Alamosa;

Rogue’s Farmstead Malt House in Tygh Valley, Oregon;

Riverbend Malt House In Asheville, North Carolina;

Valley Malt of Hadley, Massachusetts;

FarmHouse Malt of Newark Valley, New York;

Pilot Malt House of Grand Rapids, Michigan;

Deer Creek Malthouse in Pennsylvania

Keystone Malt has joined the short list of maltsters this year, founded by Alan Gladish of Praxis Communications in Huntingdon Valley, PA.

There are plenty of mega-maltsters dominating the market in America, led by Briess, Cargill, Weyermann, and more—all with vibrant portfolios, distributed through trumped-up networks like The Country Malt Group, Cargill Foods, or Crosby & Baker. But how dedicated are these mega-malthouses to the small craft brewer or homebrewer? Can micro-maltsters capture an edge? Can they overcome the pizzazz going on with yeast or hops?

The Grain Wars

For the local homebrewer, buying high quality malt for a reasonable price has become more difficult in recent years. Rising grain prices, created by the biofuel revolution, make it critical to protect the supply of malt for the growing commercial beer market. “One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people,” wrote John Vidal, Environmental Editor for The Guardian, in a 2010 article. According to Lester Brown, Director of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, DC, “The growing demand for US ethanol derived from grains helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008.” That trend has not changed.

Homebrewers complain of diminishing supply and higher prices, blaming homebrew shops for what appears to be price collusion with large commercial suppliers. The stats reveal a different story. Lester Jones, Chief Economist for the NBWA recently noted that the number of brewery permits in 2014 has topped 4,526. In 1995, fewer than 1,000 were on the books.

In reality, growing demand, brought about by record high brewery openings and competition from the biofuel industry, has created a very real shortage that impacts homebrewers and small craft breweries at the lower levels of the grain chain. The need for micro-maltsters in the current brewing community is greater than ever.

According to Brault of Deer Creek, developing a viable business plan requires a collaborative effort of community. It’s not as romantic or sexy as one might imagine. “We’re still not 100% sure what it takes—what varieties grow well here,” he says. Cultivars need disease resistance, dormancy, pre-harvest sprouting, winter hardiness—qualities that increase the yield at the finish line. Scott Welsh, agriculturist for the group, does most of the legwork and labor, and has involved Penn State in his research. This year alone, they have had 78 varieties in the ground, says Brault.

When asked if it’s possible to grow enough grain for malting, Brault explains, “We grow some ourselves, and also contract grow with farmers in Chester, Montgomery and Bucks, along with areas of Maryland.”

Micro-maltsters hone-in on harnessing the freshness and local flavor that “adds to the unique terroir of the product.” Despite that, flavors are tricky. The only accurate way of determining quality is by brewing the same beer using commercial versus micro-malt; then doing a blind tasting. Tastings have shown that fresh and local are recognizable. “There is no real common lexicon for describing flavor,” says Brault. “We have a product that tastes like Deer Creek.”

Alan Gladish has contracted Tom Culton, a Lancaster County Certified Organic Farmer, to provide 2-row winter barley and rye and 2-row spring barley for his soon-to-open Keystone Malt. Rumors point to the new malthouse operating from the Frankford Arsenal, but no real decision has been confirmed. For now, having two micro-maltsters on this side of the state is a plus for Philly’s booming brewing community.

When we have people over for our summer dinner extravaganzas, they usually question what that gross, slimy thing floating in the jar of hazy liquid on my kitchen counter is. I usually tell people that it’s either a pickled mushroom or that it’s a very docile jellyfish I tamed from my trip to Myrtle Beach in 2002. But I never tell them the horrifying, earth-shattering truth–that’s my mother in there, floating away, looking gross, and turning sugar into alcohol, and then alcohol into acetic and gluconic acid.

A kombucha mother is a totally weird thing, a nasty, solid floating mass that in a short time ferments sweet tea into a bone dry, refreshingly acidic, almost non-alcoholic, probiotic beverage. The kombucha culture is called a SCOBY, which stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. What that means to you is that there are both yeast and bacteria present, each performing different functions but co-thriving off of each other. The yeast (nerd alert: Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Brett brux are often present) are responsible for fermenting the sugar into alcohol, and then the bacteria (Acetobacter) ferment the alcohol into acetic acid.

The history of kombucha is pretty fuzzy, but most agree that it was discovered in Manchuria around 200 BC, and from there made its way into Japan (where the samurais drank it), Russia, and Germany. Some people believe that Genghis Khan and his army traveled with it, it saved Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s life while he was in exile, and that it was delivered to us by extraterrestrial beings! Regardless, it became very popular throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries up until World War II, when tea and sugar became rationed. It experienced a resurgence in Switzerland and Italy in the 60s, and from there, spread around the world. It should be noted that there is a Japanese tea made from kelp that is called either kombu or kombucha, but it is not related to the fermented tea so don’t be fooled.

There have been some pretty intense health benefits attributed to kombucha throughout the years. People have claimed that it helps in treating issues such as gout, arthritis, constipation, impotence, diabetes, obesity, cholesterol, heartburn, and even cancer. After the Chernobyl meltdown in Russia, people were exposed to massive amounts of radiation. Doctors noticed that certain people were barely affected, many of which were elderly women. What they discovered is that most people who regularly drank kombucha survived the radiation. Crazy. Personally, I suffered from heartburn, acid reflux and indigestion my entire life until I started making my own kombucha. I drink one pint a day, and those issues have all but vanished. Kombucha is not a cure-all, in fact I don’t believe it cures anything. I believe that consuming kombucha (like so many other fermented, living, probiotic foods) helps bring your body back into balance so it can heal itself, naturally.

Alright, enough hippy mumbo-jumbo, onto the fun stuff–how kombucha is made. The most important thing you need to know is that making kombucha is super easy! After experimenting for a while, I have found that this recipe works very, very well. This will produce one gallon of kombucha per week. Here’s what you need:

1 kombucha “mother”

1 pint kombucha (any commercial variety will do)

1⁄2 ounce loose leaf tea

1 cup white sugar

1 1⁄2 gallon (or larger) glass or ceramic container

French press

Rag or cheesecloth

Kombucha mothers are surprisingly easy to find. I would suggest asking around at your local co-op, community garden, yoga studio, or wherever hippies hang out in your neighborhood. If that fails, there are plenty of places to get mothers on the internet. The type of tea you use is up to you– start with a basic loose leaf green or black tea (not herbal tea) that you like and experiment from there. I use Keemun tea because it’s cheap and tasty, and I have found little difference in the finished product when playing around with different teas. The choice of container you use is very important. It has to have a mouth wide enough for you to be able to pull the mother out. There are plenty of things you can use– just check around your local thrift store or maybe at a yard sale. Or, again, there’s always the internet.

We start by making a strong tea concentrate. Put the ½ ounce of loose leaf tea into a French press and pour a quart of boiling water into it. Stir it around and let it steep for about ten minutes. Some people let it steep for two minutes, while others will leave it overnight. Again, feel free to experiment to see what works best for you. Once the tea is done steeping, press the leaves down in your French press and decant the tea concentrate. Stir the sugar into the tea concentrate. Next, add 3 quarts of filtered cold water to your glass container, then pour in the sweet tea concentrate and stir it around real good. Now, you have one gallon of sweet tea to “feed” to your mother. Finally, add the pint of finished kombucha and (with clean hands) submerge the mother. You always need some finished kombucha in the mix to drop the pH and kick-start fermentation. Cover your container with a rag or piece of cheesecloth, let it sit somewhere warm and peaceful to ferment for a week, and you have kombucha.

Now we need to bottle the finished kombucha and start the next batch. Wash your hands thoroughly and pull the mother out of the container. Decant one gallon of kombucha out of the container, leaving about a pint of kombucha behind. Set the extra kombucha off to the side to add to your next batch. You can bottle the finished kombucha in whatever you would like– I usually use growlers or mason jars. Now, we just repeat the process of making our sweet tea concentrate, adding it to three quarts of water and one quart of finished kombucha, and then put the mother in. Your kombucha is ready to drink now, but if you let it sit for a few weeks in the bottle, it will pick up some carbonation via a secondary fermentation.

A few more things and then you’re ready to do this. Your kombucha mother is a living, breathing being. Make sure you always wash your hands before touching her! Heat will kill your mother, so that’s why we always add the hot tea to cold water, bringing it to room temperature, before adding the mother. Fruit flies love fermenting kombucha, so make sure your rag or cheesecloth is tightly secured. Every time you ferment a batch of kombucha a “baby” will form on top of your mother. This means the culture will continue to get thicker and thicker. About once a month I rip the babies of off the top of the mother (it’s OK to manhandle her a little bit, she kinda likes it) and clean her up by running her under cold water. You can throw the babies away, or give them to other people so they can start to make their own kombucha.

This is the method that works for me, but it is not set in stone. Experiment! There are plenty of different ways to make kombucha, and plenty of ways to add herbs and fruit to make even crazier, healthier tonics. Many books have been written on the subject in the past few years, and I highly recommend picking a couple of those up and learning more. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Mead is an amazing beverage, it’s neither beer nor wine, but somehow falls in the middle of both. It’s an ancient beverage too, in fact, some people believe it’s actually the oldest fermented alcoholic beverage on Earth. Fermented honey dates back as early as 2000 BC based on chemical signatures found in Asian pottery. The ancient Greeks also drank ambrosia, a delicacy made of honey and believed to be the drink of the gods.

So what is mead exactly? All alcohol is derived from the conversion of sugar by yeast. Whereas beer derives its alcohol from malted barley, and wine derives its alcohol from grape juice, mead is primarily made up of fermented honey. Although mead hasn’t enjoyed the popularity that beer and cider have in the craft revolution, it finally seems to be getting some rightful attention, showing up in homebrew circles, as well as being commercially produced. The best part about this resurgence is the quality of the mead being made, no longer is it a cloyingly sweet beverage that takes years to mature. A drinkable mead can be made in under two months with only a minimal amount of time, effort, and money.

Preperation

Mead making is a bit different then homebrewing. There is no boil involved and the attention and activity needed is spread out over a few weeks rather than a six hour brew day. There is also less equipment necessary, which means less to buy and less to clean.

The first thing you need to locate is honey; the better quality honey, the better your final product will be, but really any honey will do. I prefer to use honey from an apiary in my area, these can be found by searching internet sites like honeylocator.com. Farmers’ markets are also great places to meet beekeepers from your area to score some local honey.

As for equipment, the good news is if you have homebrewed before then no extra equipment is necessary. However, if this will be your first time making mead, then I would suggest speaking with your local homebrew shop about what you’ll need to get.

Once you have your honey and equipment, it’s time to get started. To begin, combine the honey and the water. I prefer not to boil my must. I use this method because I believe it better preserves the delicate honey character in the final product. Also, honey has anti-septic properties which will keep your mead from any bacterial or wild yeast infection. Mix your honey with enough 80-90°F water to bring your total volume to 5 gallons, you can use a wine whip or a large spoon for this. Next, take a gravity reading. If you are happy with your gravity, then it’s time to add your yeast nutrient. Yeast nutrients are necessary because unlike beer, honey doesn’t have enough nutrients on its own for a healthy fermentation. For nutrients, I prefer Fermaid K, but any wine yeast nutrient will work. Sprinkle 4 grams of Fermaid K into your solution and stir it into your must, whether you are using a wine whip or spoon, you want to introduce oxygen into your mead by splashing the must. The only thing left to do is add your yeast—rehydrate it or sprinkle it on top, then close up your fermenter.

Fermentation

Like beer yeast, mead yeast likes and needs oxygen during the adaptation and growth stages of fermentation, but unlike beer, for the first 3 days you want to open up your fermenter and stir out the C02 and introduce more oxygen. This is because C02 is toxic to yeast and can impart undesired flavors that take a while to age out. Degassing the C02 will lead to a mead that is drinkable, faster. To degas, simply take your spoon or stir whip and agitate the must. Be careful and make sure everything is cleaned properly and be careful to avoid a volcano effect overflow when you are stirring out the C02.

By day 3, you should have a good fermentation going and it’s now time to add the second addition of your yeast nutrients; again sprinkle 4 grams of Fermaid K into your mead and stir. Once you have made this second nutrient addition, stirred out the C02, and introduced oxygen, it’s time to leave your mead alone until it’s done fermenting. Fermentation time can vary depending on honey variety, fermentation temperature, and the original gravity, however, a good average is about one month.

PostFermentation

After a month, take a gravity reading, then wait three days and take another gravity reading. If the gravity is the same, you’re done fermenting. Once fermentation is complete, you want to remove your mead from the inactive yeast, proteins, and heavy fats on the bottom of the fermenter and rack it into a new carboy. This will help you start the clearing process of your mead and start the bulk aging process as well. This is a great time to do a few minor adjustments to your fermented mead, like adjust the acid levels with acid blend, back sweeten if your mead is not sweet enough with more honey (be sure to add potassium sorbate so fermentation doesn’t restart) or add more spice or oak. I prefer to age my mead in a 5-gallon carboy rather than bottle right away, I believe this gives the final product a more complete and rounded flavor. During the bulk aging process, you will want to rack your mead at least one more time after about 2 months. If your mead cleared on its own after bulk aging, consider yourself lucky, if not, you will want to pick up a clarifying agent like Super-Kleer. Follow the directions and after it has cleared, rack it again into a clean carboy or your bottling bucket. Your mead is now ready to bottle. A 5-gallon batch will give you around 24 bottles (750ml) or two cases of mead.

Thinking outside the box

Meads can be as simple as honey, water, yeast, and nutrients, or as complicated as you can imagine. Don’t be afraid to try something new like barrel aging, adding a funky or sour yeast, using the whey after making cheese instead of water, or even using an unconventional ingredient like peanuts. Also, meads don’t always have to be 12% or more, I enjoy making low gravity meads in the 8% range. This way, you can enjoy a few glasses with friends and not have to age your product for extended periods of time. Anything you can imagine for a beer is just as capable for mead, so go out there and get creative!

Traditional MeaD RECIPE(Follow directions given in article)

• 15# Orange Blossom honey

(or any variety you want to use)

• Add water to achieve 5-gallons

• Lalvin 71b yeast

• 8 grams Fermaid K yeast nutrient

My recipe that recently won a first place ribbon at this year’s War of the Worts:

Petite Sirah Pyment

• 36# Petite Sirah Grapes

• 9# Wildflower honey

• Add water to achieve 5-gallons

• Lalvin D47 yeast

• 8 grams Fermaid K yeast nutrient

Have your local homebrew shop crush the grapes for you, add this must to your honey water solution. Stir and introduce oxygen for the first three days, after that, punch down the grape skins every day for a week. After a week, remove the grape skins and matter from your mead and let fermentation complete. a

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2014/08/the-sweeter-side-of-brewing/feed/0Homemade Sodahttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2014/05/homemade-soda/
Thu, 22 May 2014 17:06:49 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=20082As the craze of homebrewing continues, homebrewers are continuously looking for new ways to express their artisan spirit. Already carrying the supplies to make wine, many homebrew shops are also starting to carry the necessary ingredients to make other fermentables like cheese and yogurt. Though not typically a fermented beverage, another trend that’s been quickly on the rise is craft soda.

A trip to any better deli or market will be proof of the blossoming craft soda scene. Brands like Sprecher, Appalachian, and Fentimans are now lining the shelves with their original take on sodas. Even some of the local breweries such as Victory and Yards are offering root beers that you can find on draft. (If you’ve never had draft root beer, you don’t know what you’re missing.) With this growth, the movement has logically progressed into the homebrew world. You can even find a number of local restaurants that are creating their own takes on soda.

Similar to how one can choose among extract, all-grain brewing, or a combination of the two when brewing beer, soda provides a similar option (minus actual grain, of course). For those who just want to make a simple soda they can keg, that tastes better and is a fraction of the cost of store-brought, there are a number of soda extracts on the market. A basic blending of these extracts with water and then force-carbonating in a keg, and you’ll have your very own soda on tap in just a short time. For those who want to get a bit more creative, you can always put your own twist on the extracts and add some of your own ingredients. Some fresh vanilla beans or your favorite local honey would add a new dimension to a root beer extract. Some soda makers such as Sprecher even offer up their sodas in extract form so you can make them at home, which is a lot easier than getting a keg home from the store. All of these extracts come with simple instructions to walk you through the process.

For those that want to take the more adventurous, yet still simple process, of more of an all-grain type soda, you really have endless options on what kind of sodas you can end up with. The first option you must decide though is if you want to naturally or force-carbonate your soda. Many soda makers prefer force-carbonation for the cleaner soda flavor it provides, but natural carbonation is more of a traditional old-fashioned method, commonly used with such sodas as root beer. When using natural fermentation, you have to be very careful to stop the fermentation early to avoid giving the soda any alcohol content. Having more sugar than beer, the yeast will eat up the sugars quickly, creating a highly-carbonated beverage that will rapidly rise in ABV.

Whichever method of carbonation you choose, you will need to create a base for your soda. A base is simply a combination of water, sweetener and acid. For the sweetener you could use a natural cane sugar or honey. You could use a regular white sugar, but a natural sweetener like cane sugar or a quality honey will add a further depth of complexity to your final product. The acid is used just to balance out the sweetness of the sugar. Something as simple as lemon can be used for this and it is used in a much more minimal quantity than the sugar component.

These ingredients are simply boiled together until the sugar or honey is dissolved. The acid component is typically added at the end of the boil. For more unique flavors, all you have to do is add to this base; for a ginger ale, you would add a form of ginger to the boil. You’ll want to play with how much of each ingredient you use, when you add it to the soda, and how long you leave it in there. Similar to brewing beer, you’ll learn a lot through experimentation. For instance, if you wanted to make a coffee soda, you have multiple options of how you can add your coffee. You can brew your coffee numerous ways and add it to the boil or you could steep your coffee directly in the boil. Each method could drastically alter your final product. For those desiring to make a fruit soda, using some fresh fruits can add pectin to your
soda, which will result in a cloudier soda. You could either use pectase at the same time to breakdown the pectin or you can use one of many fruit extracts on the market, which will avoid the cloudy result. Thankfully, making soda is significantly cheaper than brewing beer, so you can be more lax about your experimentation and have fun with it.

For those that want to use yeast, ideally you will want to use a wine or champagne yeast which will add the minimal amount of yeast flavor to the soda. Beer yeast could be used as well, but it will impart more flavor, which may or may not work for your desired product. If you do choose the route of beer yeast, be sure to use an ale yeast as you don’t want a yeast that will work in cold temperatures. You will want to use plastic soda bottles when using yeast. This is to ensure if they are over-carbonated, there are no worries of broken glass and it’s easier to gauge the level of carbonation. Add the yeast when the soda is at about room temperature. Once the bottles are filled, you want to leave them at room temperature. You will be able to tell when they are properly carbonated by squeezing the bottle. As soon as they become near rock hard, you know that they are fully carbonated and that fermentation needs to be stopped before they turn into alcohol or explode. Refrigeration will stop fermentation.

Simply using kegs and force carbonating your soda makes things significantly easier and allows you to put it on draft in your home kegerator. The yeast method though, obviously adds to the homebrew spirit. Either way, in the end you will have creative, flavorful sodas to fill the void in times when you can’t get away with drinking beer. Get creative and see what kind of imaginative sodas you can come up with.

]]>Champagne Homebrewhttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/12/champagne-homebrew/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/12/champagne-homebrew/#respondThu, 19 Dec 2013 14:51:56 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=18847As the end of another year approaches and brewers scramble to decide what holiday beers to brew, there ultimately is a question from friends and family—what beers do I want with my holiday dinner? Which beer would be good for New Year’s Eve? While taste and preference is subjective, if looking to brew beers for New Year’s Eve, then consider brewing a champagne-inspired beer using champagne yeast. This is a fun way to stay true to the beverage of choice—homebrew—while keeping the celebratory spirit of the occasion—sparkling wine. While some beer drinkers do not enjoy champagne, they might enjoy beers made with champagne yeast, so it is a great compromise. If desired, cork and caged bottles work here too; shake it and spray homebrew all over the living room and friends at the stroke of midnight. Wasting of precious homebrew is usually frowned upon, but in this case, it will be allowed.

Bière de Champagne is a hybrid style, one that only a handful of breweries are producing in the US, but Belgian breweries have been making this style of beer for ages. Some of these beers are even cave-aged in the Champagne region of France. While not an official style, according to the 2008 Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) Style Guide, most resources agree that the beer is light in color and body, while higher in alcohol and quite carbonated. Generally, they range from 9-14% ABV and are served in a flute glass or chalice. Examples of Bière de Champagne or Bière Brut are Infinium by Boston Beer Company, DeuS by Browerij Bosteels, and Malheur Bière Brut by Brouwerij de Landtsheer. The DeuS and the Malheur both undergo the Methode Champenoise, where bottles are stored, aged and riddled. This is an intensive process that for most homebrewers is a bit too much of an undertaking, but it does produce a special beer. The style returns only a handful of options on review sites as well. There are not many US breweries producing this style of beer, so looking for beers to sample before brewing may be difficult.

Since the beer is harder to find in stores, if still looking to brew something special, some styles of beer can be made to be similar to a champagne beer, by adding champagne yeast at bottling. Most commonly, this is done with Belgian style triples. Finally, you could take a simple drinking beer, like a kölsch and then add champagne yeast at the end. This should result in a beer that’s champagne-like, but more for the common drinker. There’s a time and place for the Champagne of Beers, and when else is it more appropriate than New Year’s Eve? Light lagers and the decision to brew a clone of a beer like Miller High Life are some of the hardest beers to homebrew, so don’t think this is an easy way out.

To help the homebrewer decide, here are two recipes, one all-grain and one partial mash (using extract). Important to note, true Bière de Champagne needs time to mature. If you’re thinking of brewing this, you’ll need to plan ahead. Also, adding fresh yeast for bottling, especially champagne yeast can result in dreaded bottle bombs. Store at appropriate temperatures and in a place your family won’t mind if a bottle decides to pop. These recipes cover a hybrid approach to achieve the styles discussed, as any good homebrewer would, take the recipes and tweak them to fit your brew set-up and style. Thanks to the members of the Philly Homebrew Club who gave advice and input on the recipes.

Bière De Brute Force
This beer is a Belgian triple recipe designed to ferment very dry, resulting in a high in beer flavor and alcohol with added effervescence.

Bière De Grande Vie
This clone of a favorite Miller beer should be slightly more complex than its massed-produced brother. The yeast can quick condition and produce pseudo-lager beer, and according to Wyeast, ferments well cold. You may need to filter to achieve the same bright beer in clear bottles you’re used to.

Grains:
• 3 lbs. 2 Row
• 2 lbs. Flaked Corn
• 5 lbs. LME

Hops:
• Willamette – 60 minutes
• Saaz – 60 minutes

Yeast:
• Wyeast Kölsch

Mash: Partial Mash
• Steep grains in 4.5 gallons at 150°F for 60 minutes
• Sparge with 1 gallon at 175°F
• Bring to boil, once at boil, remove from heat to add LME, stir in before bringing back to a boil.

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/12/champagne-homebrew/feed/0Making Cheesehttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/10/making-cheese/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/10/making-cheese/#respondMon, 14 Oct 2013 16:53:25 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=17890A trip to your local homebrew shop will show you how these stores have progressed to adapt to the insatiability of the homebrewer. Gone are the days of simply carrying the basic needs for brewing a beer. With the growing desire to create more than just beer, shop owners are transforming their stores to accommodate and offer new opportunities for self-expression through creatively making one’s own consumable products.

Today, the shelves of homebrew shops are still filled with bins of grains and fridges overflowing with hop varietals to go along with the necessities of making your own wine, but if you look a little deeper, you’ll also come across everything you need to roast your own coffee and make your own sodas (which unlike Coca-Cola, actually can push creative boundaries), as well as pickling components, charcuterie needs, and most commonly and probably fastest growing, cheesemaking kits.

Cheese is a natural pairing for beer. There is really little that goes better with beer than cheese, and if you’re going to make your own beer, then why not make your own cheese to pair with it? As they go together ideally in flavor, they also go together in how you make them. If you already enjoy the creative process behind making your own beer, then odds are in your favor that you’ll enjoy making your own cheese as well.

The process of making cheese, like beer,
can be as simple or complicated as you make it out to be. You can start with a beginners level kit, following the step-by-step directions, getting a feel for the process (similar to a pre-made homebrew kit), and you can then work your way up to tinkering with different types of milks and cultures, while testing out different aging methods and locations as you create your own cheese recipe. For now, here are the basics of what you need to know about making cheese.

Milk

Milk is probably the most essential of ingredients and one which provides you with boundless room for experimentation. Your milk options are endless, varying from the gallon of milk you’d buy at the supermarket to raising your own goat. You can even use dry milks and non-dairy milks such as soy and almond milk. These options lead you to exciting opportunities of tweaking recipes and coming up with new cheeses.

Ideally, you will want to use unpasteurized milk. Most likely, you will not find this milk at your local supermarket, but your local farm stand or specialty store may carry some. The decision, however, is not as simple as pasteurized or unpasteurized. Cow’s milk, goat’s milk, and sheep’s milk all act differently with cheese as they each have different fat, protein, and sugar contents and flavors. To make it even more complex, different breeds of these animals will have slight differences as well. And, if that wasn’t enough options, you also have to take the diet of the animals into consideration, as a grass-fed cow will produce different milk than a corn-fed cow.

As you can see, the milk is important and is no simple decision. If you are making a certain type of cheese, there are suggested types of milks to use, which will narrow down your choices. As with brewing, experimentation is key and most likely you’ll eventually find certain farms you like for different kinds of cheeses.

Cultures

Similar to how beer needs yeast to ferment, cheese needs cultures to coagulate the milk and form cheese. These cultures are made up of varying strains of bacteria. Essentially, what you are doing with the culture is ripening your milk and converting the natural sugars found in the milk into a lactic acid.

Each type of cheese requires different cultures and even slight nuances in quantity and strands can make a vast difference in your end result. These cultures will also all work differently with different types of milk. Think of it how you would in making a beer. There are lager yeasts for making lagers, hefeweizen yeasts for making hefeweizens and ale yeasts for making ales. It is very similar with cheese cultures, but there is always room for experimentation and to create new types of cheeses.

Rennet

After you have added your cultures to the milk and it forms curds, rennet is needed. Rennet is what allows the excess liquid to separate from the curds and run off as whey.

Rennet is an enzyme that can be a derivative of either animals or vegetables. Animal-based rennet is pulled from the stomachs of calves, lambs or goats and is 90% chymosin. It must, however, be derived from young animals while they are still solely surviving off their mother’s milk.

For those who would prefer a vegetable derived rennet, this option is found in a certain type of mold called Mucor miehei, which is an equal product to chymosin. Choosing between the animal or vegetable rennet will make little to no difference in your final product and is solely a personal preference.

Milk, cultures, and rennet make up the three essential ingredients to making cheese, however, there are a number of additives and ingredients you can add and some types of cheeses require much more. For instance, hard, aged cheeses will require waxing, while basic soft cheeses can be made solely from these three ingredients. Mastering these ingredients will bring you a long way towards mastering cheesemaking in general.

To make things even more interesting, once you get the basics down, you can start playing with adding beer to your curds and/or washing your cheeses in it. Different types of beers will have different effects, leading to even more options of types of cheeses, not to mention, making your own cheese and washing it in your own beer is sure to impress anyone and make for a great homemade gift.

As for equipment, most of the necessary equipment is already in the home of any homebrewer. One really only needs a large pot to cook in, a thermometer, cheese-cloth and a long knife to cut the curds, making it an inexpensive hobby to dabble in. Items such as presses will be needed for certain hard cheeses and different climate controlled areas and refrigeration may be needed as well.

For any homebrewer who enjoys cheese, cheesemaking is a natural step of progression. There are a fair number of basic concepts that carry over from one world to the other and the mindset is similar. Plus, you can always use something else to do besides drink during the down times of a brew day.

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/10/making-cheese/feed/0Battle of the Homebrew Shops Championhttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/08/battle-of-the-homebrew-shops-champion/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/08/battle-of-the-homebrew-shops-champion/#respondFri, 02 Aug 2013 21:13:45 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=17696Sean Keffer recently won the 2nd Annual Battle of the Homebrew Shops, having collaborated with Russ Czajka of Keystone Homebrew Supply. The result and winner was a barrel-aged blood orange saison. Sean started homebrewing in late 2009 when he received a Mr. Beer Kit as a gift. Since then, his set-up has progressed rapidly. As a homebrewer, he enjoys putting an adventurous spin on beer recipes to try and push the envelope every time.

The following are Sean’s round 1 winning entry and final round winning entry:

German Chocolate Rye AleFor this German Chocolate Rye Ale, I wanted to do something different when submitting to the first round of the competition. I began to notice that Rye IPA was a very popular beer. While I enjoy a unique IPA as much as the next person, I noticed Keystone Homebrew was selling Chocolate Rye Malt. I couldn’t resist! Through olfactory hues, I gathered together what ingredients you see here. The beer is porter-like characteristically, has a wonderful chocolate nose, and forms a nice velvety body with age. Every time you crack open a bottle, the flavors continue to explode as it aerates in the glass. I hope you enjoy it!

Procedure:
• Mash into 4 gallons of water at 172 degrees (final mash temp should be 152°-154°) for 60 minutes
• Bring 4 gallons of water to 172 degrees
• Perform vorlauf to achieve clarity of wort
• Transfer 4 gallons of water to hot liquor tank
• Sparge mash and transfer into brew kettle
• Bring to rolling boil and follow hop regimen
• Cool wort to 60 degrees, rack to carboy and pitch yeast
• Ferment for one week
• Transfer to secondary and ferment for an additional week

Blood Orange Saison

In developing the Blood Orange Saison, I wanted to go for something juxtaposed to
the summer season, yet full in flavor. When brewing with Russ Czajka, I introduced the idea of adding blood oranges into the secondary fermenter, as it was something I did successfully before. My goal was to emulate the fruit notes of the whiskey barrel while adding citrus sugars to achieve more activity. Voilà, here is the Blood Orange Saison. An amber-colored beer from blood orange fermentation, this beer has a woody, citrus nose. The flavor is clean and refreshing as you get a slight kick of whiskey heat in the end. Be careful, this one can really sneak up on you! Enjoy!

Procedure:
• Mash into 4 gallons of water at 168 degrees (final mash temp should be 153°) for 60 minutes
• Bring 4 gallons of water to 168 degrees
• Perform a vorlauf to achieve clarity of wort
• Transfer water to hot liquor tank
• Sparge and transfer into brew kettle
• Bring wort to a rolling boil
• Follow hop regimen
• Transfer to carboy and pitch yeast
• After two weeks of fermentation, rack into secondary carboy and add blood oranges
• Ferment for one week
• Age for three weeks inside Dad’s Hat Barrel

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/08/battle-of-the-homebrew-shops-champion/feed/0History of the National Homebrewers Conferencehttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/06/history-of-the-national-homebrewers-conference/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/06/history-of-the-national-homebrewers-conference/#respondTue, 04 Jun 2013 17:46:48 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=17146Back on May 5th, 1979, it would have been hard to anticipate that the National Homebrewers Conference (NHC) would grow to the size it has. Held in the Community Free School in Boulder, Colorado, the NHC originally welcomed about 200 attendees to their gathering in celebration of the homebrew community. For ten years it stayed in the Colorado area, as it slowly grew in attendance and moved on from schools to local hotels. Home of the American Homebrewers Association, a branch of the Brewers Association and the Great American Beer Festival starting in 1983, it was a logical hub for the conference to plant its roots.

In 1989, with the homebrew community growing throughout the country, the NHC hit the road; its first stop being in Cincinnati, Ohio at the now defunct Oldenberg Brewery. Following that first trip out of the state of Colorado, the NHC made it an annual tradition to hold the conference in a different city each year, only having returned to Colorado twice since. The conferences have made it to the East Coast only a single time, during a 1991 conference in Manchester, NH. A year before, the NHC showed true signs of growth, having doubled its original capacity at the conference held in Oakland, California.

However, the growth following that did not stay consistent. In 1997, things appeared to peak with over eight hundred attendees. But over the next seven years, those numbers fluctuated quite drastically, dipping as low as just over the 200 mark. By this point though, the competitive angle of the conference–the National Homebrew Competition–was in full force and receiving on the plus side of 3,000 entries. The homebrew community was obviously hungry for more.

In its 35th anniversary, the NHC is finally making its way to Philadelphia. Home to the premier beer culture in the country, Philly homebrewers made that fact well-known by selling out the conference in record time. It took the homebrew community less than half the time it took to sell-out last year (20 hours compared to 2 days). That’s not even the impressive part. This year’s conference is nearly double the size in attendance, with 3,400 homebrewers expected to invade Philadelphia from near and far. A true testament to our world-class beer culture.

So what exactly is a homebrewers conference all about, and why all the hype? As local homebrewer and soon-to-be professional brewer, Sean Mellody puts it: “NHC is what I imagine Star Trek conventions are like, but with beer, and probably less woman, unfortunately.”

From an educational standpoint there are two main aspects to the Conference: seminars and the Homebrew Expo. The seminars occur each afternoon and cover any homebrewing topic you can imagine. Various professional brewers, authors, and experts present hour long sessions; renowned names in the industry including Mitch Steele, Dick Cantwell, and Stan Hieronymus will be among the speakers. Homebrewers can wander in and out of all the seminars they would like to attend (there are typically three seminars going on simultaneously). Not all can be attended, so picking and choosing what is most fitting for you personally is important and sometimes, the most challenging part. Thankfully, there is typically beer involved and if there’s not, you’re free to bring beer with you. Most seminars tend to have an interactive aspect as well, so homebrewers can fire-off their pressing questions.

The other educational aspect of the Conference is the Homebrew Expo. The expo is a giant trade show geared towards the homebrew community. Homebrewers can dig their hands into all kinds of malts and hops in search of finding new ingredients for their next batch of beer. Many homebrew shops and equipment manufacturers will be there as well, showcasing the latest innovations in the homebrew world. Most importantly, there will be beer poured. Both homebrew clubs and professional brewers will be in attendance, pouring samples of their finest. The expo is like no other for homebrewers and one of the greatest opportunities to hone the craft.

Throughout the course of the day there is also a Social Club set-up. It is here that you can freely come and go as you please and sample all the various beers. At the end of the night, after all the seminars and banquets are complete, the Social Club grows in size and becomes a party (that just so happens to be sponsored by Philly Beer Scene). It is here that you can end the night making friends, drinking beer and truly enjoying your experience.

Other non-educational parts of the Conference include Pro-Brewers Night, Club Night, and the Grand Banquet & Awards Ceremony. Pro-Brewers Night is exactly what it sounds like–a night to drink professionally brewed beers. It’s time to take a break from all the great homebrews you’ve been drinking and enjoy the beers from homebrewers of the past. Club Night is the exact opposite. This is the night where all the homebrew clubs get to show-off, and what is largely considered the most fun part of the Conference. Clubs tend to go all out, each setting up a booth and dressing up in costume or following some sort of theme to stand out among the rest while they show- off their fine creations.

Finally, there is the Grand Banquet. This is a culmination of sorts for the conference. All the homebrewers gather for an epic meal created by famous homebrew chef, Sean Paxton. This multi-course meal is paired with beers from Rogue Ales and each dish incorporates hops, grains, and/or beer making for the perfect meal. Throughout the evening, awards are also handed out for the National Homebrew Competition.

All in all, the NHC has grown into a not- to-be-missed experience for any homebrew advocate. As Mellody puts it, “Each of these main events are top-quality beer events, that honestly, I think don’t get a lot of press outside the homebrew community, since we are the only ones experiencing it. These ‘fests’ are like no other. The Pro-Am night with home brewers and professional brewers was by far the best beer event I’ve ever been to. That’s saying a lot, too.”

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/06/history-of-the-national-homebrewers-conference/feed/0Luck of the Irishhttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/02/luck-of-the-irish/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/02/luck-of-the-irish/#respondTue, 12 Feb 2013 16:44:39 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=16618There’s no denying it. St. Patrick’s Day is one of the most popular holidays celebrated at bars. Pub crawls, green beer, lots of toasting and laughter. You clearly don’t need to be Irish to be drawn into the festivities. But, if you prefer to celebrate at home this year —or to extend your celebration with your own private party— there are several homebrew recipes that will serve you very well. All are low ABV and very drinkable. Plus, the flavors are so genuinely Irish, you’ll be dancing a jig in no time.

Dry Irish Stout
The beer that is most often associated with St. Patrick’s Day is probably the Dry Irish Stout. Made famous by breweries like Beamishand Guinness, the “stout” dates back hundreds of years. Originally synonymous with “strong” beer, modern stouts differ considerably from their predecessors. Today, the “stout” is typically a light-bodied, low alcohol beer that imparts a host of very dry and roasty flavors. The key ingredient in a classic Irish Stout is roasted barley. Roasted barley gives Irish Stout its coffee-like flavor, deep dark color, and white foamy head.

The recipe for this beer is a 5-gallon all-grain batch. The grain bill is dominated by English pale malt, accompanied by the key ingredient—roasted barley. It is traditionally brewed with English hops, like East Kent Goldings or Fuggle. This is a very simple beer to make and produces a great Guinness-style taste every time.

Irish Red Ale
The history of Irish Red is not as well-known as other beers. Although many of the traditional Irish ales share some similarities with their English counterparts, including English Bitters, Irish Red is generally recognized as its own distinct style, most closely represented by the Irish Red Ales brewed in Ireland today, such as Smithwick’s Red Aleand Beamish Red Ale. Irish Reds normally have a clean, dry finish, with mild toffee malt favors and little to no hop aroma. Similar to Dry Irish Stout, the Irish Red gets its unique coloring from the presence of roasted barley.

This beer is made from a very simple extract recipe, perfect for even a novice brewer. It is another very drinkable, low alcohol beer that would be a hit at any St. Patrick’s Day party.

Berliner Weisse
When formulating a list of beers for a traditional Irish holiday celebration, a Berliner Weisse is kind of a stretch. However, it’s a perfect way to achieve that goofy, obligatory green-colored beer, without settling on macro swill with food coloring.

The Berliner Weisse is a light-bodied sour beer that originated from Germany around the 17th century. Due to its sourness, flavored syrups have historically been added to smooth out the tartness. The most popular of these additives is something called “woodruff” syrup, which not only imparts a sweet flavor, but also changes the beer to a green hue.

This is definitely a more advanced recipe, as there are many ways to achieve the desired level of tartness, including different rests during the mash and utilizing multiple yeast strains. This recipe relies on a specific yeast blend created especially for the Berliner Weisse. It’s a good idea to discuss this process with your local home brew shop before attempting this recipe. But, it’s well worth the effort for the compliments you’ll receive.

]]>http://www.beerscenemag.com/2013/02/luck-of-the-irish/feed/0Holiday Homebrewshttp://www.beerscenemag.com/2012/12/holiday-homebrews/
http://www.beerscenemag.com/2012/12/holiday-homebrews/#respondTue, 11 Dec 2012 21:57:25 +0000http://beerscenemag.com/?p=16405Dedicated brewers find their inspiration in many places; the time of year is always a strong influence. Fortunately, there are many great options for channeling the season into our brew kettles. Below are three beer recipes that embody the spirit of the winter holidays.

Belgian Fruit Cake Ale

Fruit cake gets a bum rap. It’s the gift that nobody wants. But how about a beer inspired by fruit cake?

That’s a different story entirely. Beer lovers would undoubtedly welcome this gift. And, if paired with fruit cake, it might actually make the original edible.

This is an all-grain recipe with a fairly large grain bill. Therefore, this is geared towards the slightly more experienced brewer. It includes dried figs and currants, which add a slight sweet fruit flavor to this full-bodied, complex beer. The Belgian yeast rounds out the flavor with a nice, spicy, dry finish. Special thanks go to Nick and Jimmy at Barry’s Homebrew Supply, who created this recipe.

With a Christmas tree in almost every home, spruce is a scent and flavor that is clearly associated with the holiday season. Here’s a beer with a unique spruce flavor and it pairs well with any meat traditionally served at a holiday meal.

This is a 5 gallon partial mash recipe, so it’s a great beer for brewers at any level. Be aware that the adjuncts have very strong flavors, so it’s best to start out with modest amounts and add more in the later stages of fermentation if necessary. Thanks go to award-winning home brewer Mike Sodano for sharing this recipe.

Everyone enjoys eggnog during the holiday season. So why not create a beer that mimics that flavor? Since eggnog is traditionally prepared with cinnamon and nutmeg, mixing those spices with a milk-stout recipe produces a beer reminiscent of this holiday favorite.

This is another all-grain recipe, so it’s for the slightly more advanced brewer. To experiment further, you can also mix in other items associated with eggnog, such as cloves or mint. Or, try aging this brew in a brandy barrel or with soaked woodchips to enhance the taste.